Sunday, November 16, 2008

I have passed 3,000 posts on this blog.

It surprises me to find that I now have written more than 3,000 posts here since September 2004. This one is 3010. According to sitmeter, I have had 38,542 hits and 54,816 page views.

Doing this I have made $0.0 dollars in either ad revenue or referrals on books. So I'm sure as Hell not doing it for the money.

Some of the comments have been interesting, particularly the guy who claimed to be an ex-Yugoslav Air Force pilot looking for a position. I'd really like a lot more comments. Anyone out there know how to write? How does Atrios bait his commenters to post?

My understanding of politics, governance and economics have all grown greatly during this last four years because of the research I had to do to write some of the posts. The writing also helps. More comments from readers, especially intelligent comments, would add to my education, so get on the stick you yardbirds! Comments are no longer requested. They are now demanded!

Since one of my purposes in writing this blog is to learn to write to please an audience, comments are not limited to the subject of the post. Like any aspiring writer, I need harsh but specific editorial comments. Saying "That's good" is not criticism. Writers need specific guidance regarding what they are doing wrong and how to do things better.

Unfortunately Writer's Guide does not provide any guidance on how to write a blog that attracts an audience. Nor does any other writing reference I have located. So any advice you can contribute will be considered seriously.

I try to read into the sitemeter statistics why people click on my blog. My two most popular posts have been How long will the recession last and what caused it? dated January 25, 2008 (which is dated and improved in later posts no one looks at) and Where did cats come from? dated January 07, 2006. This latter fascinates me. It was written by New york Times science writer Nicholas Wade and should be freely available on the Internet but apparently is not. Wade has also written the utterly fascinating book Before the Dawn: Recovering The Lost History of Our Ancestors which is a history of the human race as recently known based on genetic research. Like all science, it is subject to revision, but it is closer to being correct than anything older (including especially the Bible if read as either history or science. The Bible is narrative, not history or science.)

In any case, if you want to know more about anything I post I read comments, sometimes respond to them when they are not spam or Racism, and I can be reached by email at the "Email Me e-mail to editor" link in the upper right corner of this blog.

In any case, if you get this far you are one of my readers and I appreciate you. Let's continue this relationship. It's shared ideas, thoughts and feelings. That's what this blog is all about.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on your posting history and accomplishments!

Your requests resonate with me as I also have a dearth of commenters and would like more feedback to help me become better and more responsive to readership desires.

So - here's an initial impression for what it's worth ($.00):

Your content is easy to read in the three column format, but your centered banner Google ad looks like your post title, and it isn't visually pleasing. Could you move it or change the settings to spotlight the post instead of the ads?

The blog title graphic doesn't stand out in any way. Could you consider perhaps a different font, header or banner graphics, a photo or some other visual effect to make readers' eyes focus immediately on the blog title?

That said, I'm very visually challenged, and I'm definitely not creative, so I look at other popular blogs with similar targeted readership and I try to adapt ideas from what looks appealing to me.

I usually read your posts from the Google reader. You might consider only allowing the reader to have the first graf or two instead of the entire post so that people have to click through to your blog.

Hope this gives you some food for thought (that doesn't result in food poisoning).

Best-

Richard said...

Thanks for the advice. You are quite right about the appearance.

I have been busy following the politics and economics and writing about it, and have simply not looked at the appearance of the site itself. I am frankly not very interested in graphics and website design.

But it is necessary, and I will direct my efforts at improving it. Both of your suggestions on visual appeal are excellent.

The information about the google reader is something I was completely unaware of.

So much to do. So little time. And I really want to do the fun stuff - researching and writing.